Managing Anxiety Teaching Resources

Browse anxiety management worksheets, student activities and more teacher resources designed to help you help your students as they learn to face anxiety head-on.

This collection of teacher-created printable and digital resources was designed by the expert teachers of Teach Starter with a focus on creating actionable tips and techniques for kids to manage their anxiety in school and at home.

Are you looking for some strategies to successfully teaching anxiety management in your classroom? Read on for a primer from our teacher team, including a kid-friendly definition of anxiety and tools you can employ in your elementary or middle school classroom.

What Is Anxiety? A Kid-Friendly Definition

Research tells us that an increasing number of young kids are experiencing anxiety, but they often don't have a name for this feeling. Understanding what we're feeling and how to manage it often starts with putting a name to the feeling.

Here's a definition of anxiety you can use in your SEL lessons to introduce the topic to your students:

Anxiety is one way the body responds to fear that something bad or dangerous will happen. This emotion involves worried thoughts, and it can make the body feel tense.

Sometimes, anxiety can make us feel tired or dizzy, and some people will have trouble breathing or feel hot and sweaty when they are feeling anxious.

Some other signs of anxiety in kids include:

• Difficulty concentrating in class
• Difficulty doing tasks that we typically enjoy
• Feeling out of control
• Trouble managing our emotions
• Trouble sleeping

What Is Anxiety Management? A Kid-Friendly Definition

Managing anxiety can be particularly difficult for our students, who may never have experienced these feelings before and haven't yet developed the skills they need to cope.

That's where teaching anxiety management comes in. But what is anxiety management, and what does it look like for kids?

Here's a helpful definition you can add to your lessons:

Anxiety management is the name we give to the strategies that we use to reduce the impact of anxiety on our physical bodies and our mental health.